Forum Archive Index - May 2004

[Robin Benson <rob@hammerheadmedia.co.uk>]

Well if it's in the paper, and Frank Haden wrote it (to boot), then it 
must be true.

With respect Hugh, you haven't answered any of the points previously 
made but instead respond with a Frank Haden article? You must be 
desperate, but here are a few more to mull over.

Responses to a few of Haden's "facts"/claims.

1. "nuclear power the only remaining viable option"
Wind power experiences continued significant investment here in Europe, 
with major wind power initiatives in most countries, for example 
Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Denmark (the main source of much 
wind-power technology and experience). Meantime, populations continue 
to voice their opposition to nuclear-powered facilities.

2. "France, for example, now gets 75% of its power from nuclear plants."
Electricite de France, the French national electricity company, was 
busy in the late 90s building wind-powered plants for other countries. 
CRE (Commission de régulation de l'énergie) in France was busy early in 
2004 calling for tenders for offshore wind farms in France. France's 
move towards wind-power is possibly the slowest in Europe, but it seems 
that it has a solid future, with some of the big players in the 
wind-power industry increasingly active there. Increasingly, wind-power 
is being employed along France's coastline.

3. "The demand for French exports of food grown under their shadow is 
not affected."
This claim implies a comparison between New Zealand and France that is 
simply erroneous and misleading. France has a significant famous food 
tradition with well-developed marketing channels and relationships, 
much of which exists within Europe. NZ is out there in the ocean, 
fighting for access and battling with supply issues that, for example, 
France doesn't have. Decisions whether to buy one product vs. another 
are frequently made on the basis of a number of different factors, and 
if NZ's clean-green factor were removed, a more competitive advantage 
would disappear. Somehow "clean green" France, Korea, Japan, etc., 
doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Haden suffers from the "demand is growing and there's nothing  we can 
do about it" delusion. What is the matter with demanding that 
electricity be generated by methods with acceptable worse-case 
scenarios and then let the market contribute to solving the problem? 
No, what the Hadens of this world want is open-season to generate as 
much electricity as can be sold for the cheapest price possible with no 
regard, and little or preferably zero responsibility for the worst-case 
scenario of generating problems.

And now Chernobyl is a dirty word and apparently cannon be mentioned in 
this debate. Chernobyl was the result of silly human error and outdated 
equipment. Well, of late, the British state-run British Nuclear Fuels 
(BNFL) is supposed to operate within strict safety parameters but, 
alas, those error-prone humans are at it again[1] : safety breaches, 
falsification of records and lying to customers (the Japanese in one 
case, who decided against MOX [1] in Takahama4 eventually, as did the 
Swiss at Beznau).

I could go on but I think you get the picture.

If CEN were ever to go nuclear (not that it will happen anytime soon in 
my opinion) sooner or later, you'd better be ready for fallout.

Robin

PS. Here's a link especially for bikers:

        http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

[1] See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992391 for 
background.
[2] Plutonium Mixed Oxide, BNFL's fuel pellets.

On 10 May 2004, at 20:16, hugh webber wrote:

> Here's the missing factual knowledge Ralph et al. As a CEN holder and 
> an environmental solution I
> look forward to CEN proceeding with a nuclear power plant.
>
> NUCLEAR  POWER TO THE PEOPLE – IT IS TIME THE GREENIES GAVE WAY
> (Frank Haden – Sunday Star Times May 10 2004).
>
> "The abandonment of the Waitaki River's Project Aqua, our forlorn hope 
> of fending off power
> shortages, was the last straw.
> We must tell the  silly environmentalists to shut up so we can talk 
> seriously about modern safe
> nuclear energy as the only way out of our power crisis.
> We've run out of options as our power needs inexorably increase at 
> 2.5% a year. With no effective
> generation prospects in sight, we face an increase of around 60% in 
> demand by 2024.
> If our situation were not so serious you'd have to laugh about the 
> pickle the environmentalists
> have helped get us into.
> They insist New Zealand must stop burning coal, gas and other fossil 
> fuels to produce electricity.
> They gather Kyoto courage from Doomsdaying scientists such as 
> Britain's Sir David King, who
> predicted last week global warming will heat the planet up so fast 
> we'll all have to live in the
> Antarctic by the end of this century – it will be the only place on 
> earth cool enough to sustain
> life.
> They helped undermine Project Aqua, calling it desecration of our 
> sacred inheritance of unspoiled
> natural environment. For the same reason they oppose polluting our 
> skylines and quiet suburban
> lifestyle by putting windmills on the ridge lines.
> Their latest idiocy is their support of hydrogen fuel cells for 
> vehicles, ignoring the fact vast
> quantities of electricity have to be generated to separate hydrogen 
> from water to pump into the
> cells.
> They won't face the fact we have reached the end of the road, with 
> nuclear power the only remaining
> viable option. Listen to them when anyone suggests what they see as 
> the Devil's Alternative. We
> won't give up New Zealand's clean, green nuclear-free image, they 
> shout.
> Remember Chernobyl , they gibber.
> They won't listen when they are told Chernobyl was a one-off, never to 
> be repeated freak event.
> They don't want to hear the Chernobyl reactors were built to an old 
> fashioned, inherently dangerous
> design other countries wouldn't touch with a barge pole.
> They don't want to know nuclear power experts around the world had 
> warned the Russians not to use
> thedesign, and were not surprised when what was almost inevitable, 
> given Murphy's Law and a bunch
> of lunatics ignoring the most basic safety procedures, finally 
> happened.
> When a series of human errors piled on one another and the plant blew 
> up, the opponents of nuclear
> power got what they needed. They had a mystical, almost religious 
> catch-phrase for those who fear
> what they don't understand: Remember Chernobyl!
> I found out just how strong is the unwillingness to face the nuclear 
> facts more years ago than I
> care to remember, long before Chernobyl, when I visited three overseas 
> nuclear power stations and
> returned home to write a full page national newspaper article 
> headlined "Time to Go Nuclear".
> The Prime Minister of the time, Norman Kirk, was furious. This was not 
> the sort of thing he would
> expect any decent journalist to write, he expostulated when he rang me 
> at home the morning it
> appeared.
> But now we're in the 21st century. We have to work past Chernobyl and 
> face our urgent need for
> nuclear power as the only way out of our dilemma. The government must 
> recognise the need, and, act
> with resolution to put the uninformed environmentalists in their place.
> The facts can't be disputed. Modern third generation nuclear power 
> plants of the size New Zealand
> would need, say 500 megawatts, the same as Benmore or Project Aqua, 
> will soon be available. They
> will be much more efficient than today's plants.
> Several competing designs are planned or being built in Japan, Taiwan, 
> and South Korea. Their
> automatic safety systems include passive energy dissipation or natural 
> processes so they can
> correct their own malfunctions without human intervention.
> Another important advance is they will burn up most of their fuel. 
> This means they will produce
> only a small amount of waste, around 100 tonnes a year, to be sealed 
> up in molten glass in
> stainless steel containers and buried for no more than a few centuries.
> They can be built anywhere, so slotting a couple in 50 or 100 km from 
> Auckland would end at a
> stroke the North Island's dependence on South Island power, and the 
> losses involved in transmission
> across Cook Strait.
> The third generation designs have evolved from decades of safe 
> generation by older plants in many
> countries. The experience of these countries can teach us useful 
> lessons.
> France, for example, now gets 75% of its power from nuclear plants. 
> The demand for French exports
> of food grown under their shadow is not affected. They are huge plants 
> – two in the wine producing
> Rhone Valley generate between them more power than all of New 
> Zealand's power stations put
> together.
> We should remind our nail biting environmentalists that nuclear power 
> plants, among their many
> advantages, produce no greenhouse gases and are economical, costing no 
> more than fossil
> fuel-burning plants to run." 

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